the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 30, 2023
Since October 7, terror has fallen on Palestinians in the thin strip of land called Gaza. Homes, hospitals, UN-administered schools, mosques, churches ... the two-and-a-half million inhabitants have nowhere to shelter from the bombardments. Nowhere to get food, water, fuel, or medicine.
With more than 7,700 dead and 19,000 injured as of October 28, entire neighborhoods razed, and hospitals overwhelmed, the tragedy unfolds before the eyes of the world. This is a policy of blind vengeance on the part of the Israeli State, and it is being done in the name of the entire Israeli population. Nothing can justify such an act.
Friday, October 27, saw the heaviest bombardment yet in this three-week-long series of attacks. The bombardment included “bunker-buster” bombs—supposedly aimed at collapsing the network of tunnels Hamas had built under Gaza. No one knows if they reached the tunnels. But what we do know, and what cannot be denied, is that the bombs did destroy all the buildings on top of the ground, killing or injuring anyone still in them. And what we do know is that the U.S. paid for these bombs.
Israel had ordered all civilians in the North—that is, over one million people—to evacuate to the south of Gaza—now it treats everyone left in the North as enemy combatants. In fact, that evacuation has been next to impossible. Israel bombed southern Gaza after announcing that evacuation would allow civilians to be safe!
Under cover of this bombardment, the Israeli army carried out an unannounced ground invasion. The Gaza Health Ministry has said that over 400 Palestinians were killed in the first several hours of the invasion. The area is now in darkness, with electricity and phone service severed.
How far will Israel take this invasion? The future of Palestinians and Israelis will be determined by these events for decades to come. The future of the whole Middle East depends on them. And who can be sure that this conflict will not set the planet ablaze?
The carnage perpetrated today in Gaza is done with the complicity and the full approval of all the imperialist powers. U.S. imperialism is managing the genocide, giving the Israeli military “advice” and using its firepower to “contain” the Gaza killing zone. There is nothing astonishing in this: the U.S. has never prevented Israel from the systematic oppression of Palestinians, whether they live in Gaza, in the West Bank, or in Israel.
For decades, the U.S., at the head of all the Western powers, has made the State of Israel its armed enforcer in the region to prevent the different peoples of the region from fulfilling their aspirations to live together with each other in peace and in countries not controlled against them.
And, of course, there is oil—the reason U.S. imperialism, along with French and British, moved into the Middle East in the first place.
U.S. imperialism and its allies have created an explosive situation in the whole region. In this oil-rich Middle East, they have imposed their domination by carving into the flesh of peoples, relying on the most reactionary monarchies and dictatorships, like that of Saudi Arabia. And when those regimes do not fall in line enough, they crush them, as they did in Iraq.
Today, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, and Yemen are ticking social bombs as well, with tens of millions of poor people in as desperate a situation as the Palestinians. In a tinderbox where the slightest spark can cause a blast, the U.S. let Netanyahu play with fire.
Hope can only come from the peoples of the region themselves. It will come from those who rise up against imperialism and its maneuvers. It will come from those who understand the need to fight capitalism and the big bourgeoisie. And from the U.S. working class when it recognizes that the same imperialism has its foot on our throat as well.
Overthrowing imperialism to establish an egalitarian society, free of exploitation and relations of domination, is the only way out for humanity. This perspective is the opposite of nationalist policies aimed at defending the interests of one people at the expense of others—the opposite of Netanyahu’s policy in Israel, but also of Hamas’ policy in Palestine. It is the opposite of the policies that U.S. imperialism engineers in our name.
Only a union of the workers of all countries against the world’s leaders will be able to break the vicious cycle of war they’re dragging us into.
Oct 30, 2023
Book: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh, Arthur Lall, 1956. Also, a movie of the same name, 1998, is streaming on Amazon for $1.99.
This book tells the heartbreaking story of the 1947 forced division of India into two countries defined by religion: Muslim Pakistan, and Hindu and Sikh India.
The division was a precondition for Britain to pull out of the area and its “granting” of independence to India and Pakistan. Britain fanned the flames and then pulled its army out.
The forced division tore the country apart; ten million people, families, and neighbors who had lived next door to each other for generations had now to go to entirely different countries. Conditions were dire and tense. Racial and religious prejudices of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims were whipped up, and the tensions resulted in an enormous race riot. Whole trains were attacked, or villagers on foot were ambushed. One million people of all cultures were murdered.
The central characters in the book are a young Muslim woman and a young Sikh man, in love with each other. Both live in a small, peaceful border village yet untouched by the surrounding riots and violence. You see the intertwining of all the cultures against a backdrop of corrupt government politicians and police. Gradually, the horrific events overcome even their village.
The book is a beautiful depiction of everyday life of that time and shows how society’s racial and religious divisions can be manipulated by the ruling class to keep us at each other’s throats.
Film: Born in Gaza, 2014, streaming on Netflix
This documentary film tells the story of life in Gaza through the words of about ten children of Gaza. They describe to us how their families lived in Gaza and how they supported themselves by farming, fishing, or in retail or factory work. And they tell how the constant bombardment by Israel in the conflict of 2014 has injured or killed friends or family members and how it crippled their ability to survive. The children take you to the sites where the bombs fell and show you the tatters of their lives.
After watching this film, you gain an intimate understanding through the clear voices of the children.
Oct 30, 2023
A very effective vaccine against tuberculosis, one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, could have been developed more than five years ago and potentially saved tens of millions of lives. But, the owner of this vaccine, a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical giant, GSK (formerly GlaxoSmithKline), chose not to invest in its development because GSK could not lucratively profit from its sales.
An estimated 2 billion people are infected with tuberculosis globally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Around 13 million people in the U.S. live with tuberculosis infection in their lungs. The vaccine called BCG, developed a hundred years ago, protects young children against tuberculosis. But the immunity that this old vaccine provides wanes over time, and its effectiveness is also quite low against getting infected. As a result, if you have a weakened immune system, you will get sick with tuberculosis.
In early-stage clinical trials, GSK’s new vaccine prevented over half of those infected with tuberculosis from getting sick, the most significant tuberculosis vaccine breakthrough in a century. This new vaccine took its boosted effectiveness from an ingredient extracted from the bark of a tree growing in Chile.
The U.S. government scientists, not GSK, developed this revolutionary technology. After learning it from the government scientists, GSK developed a vaccine against tuberculosis by using the same tree-bark-derived ingredient. As an icing on the cake, the U.S. government provided the funds for this development.
This work helped GSK to gain the know-how to develop other vaccines resting on the same ingredient. Then, the company started to corner the vaccine market by patenting this concept, and controlling this ingredient’s extraction process and raw materials associated with the vaccine preparation. As a result, GSK developed a monopoly on the vaccines that contained this ingredient.
GSK knew tuberculosis primarily affects large numbers of people in low-income countries, and selling the tuberculosis vaccine worldwide was, therefore, not profitable. Instead, GSK developed a vaccine against shingles, containing the same tree-bark-derived ingredient, to target the world’s most profitable vaccine market, the United States. Shingles afflicts large numbers of mostly older people who, in the U.S., are covered mainly by government insurance. So, GSK found a vast captive market funded by our tax money. GSK’s shingles vaccine became what the company calls a “crown jewel,” extracting more than $14 billion from us since 2018.
A tuberculosis vaccine could also have been developed at the same time. But GSK consciously blocked its development through the monopoly it created, condemning tens of millions of people to an early death.
Companies gain market control of revolutionary inventions initiated by government-funded organizations and use such inventions to extract profits from our lives and health. Such acts are barbarism at its best.
Oct 30, 2023
In mid-October, the two biggest U.S. oil companies went on a spending spree. First out of the deal gate, ExxonMobil announced it was buying the fracking giant Pioneer Resources for a “modest” 60 billion dollars. This acquisition would make Exxon the dominant oil and gas producer in the Permian Basin, which straddles West Texas and New Mexico and is among the lowest-cost and most profitable oil fields in the world.
Not to be outdone, Chevron rushed to announce that it was buying up Hess Corporation, another big oil company, for “only” $53 billion. By buying Hess, Chevron expects to gain a stranglehold on oil and gas production in Guyana, the South American country that is one of the world’s biggest new oil producers.
These mergers show these companies’ real intentions for the future: to continue to produce huge amounts of oil and gas, no matter what the consequences are for the people and the planet.
This is hardly a surprise. Internal documents from both companies recently published revealed that as far back as the 1970s, both companies’ scientists knew that the burning of fossil fuels contributed to the warming of the planet. Exxon scientists’ predictions of how fast the climate was warming turned out to be even more accurate than those of U.S. government scientists!
But that didn’t stop both companies from saying the exact opposite publicly and financing disinformation campaigns. Former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond said in 2000: "We do not have sufficient scientific understanding of climate change to make reasonable predictions." In 2013, the CEO at the time, Rex Tillerson, who later became secretary of state under Donald Trump, affirmed that there were “uncertainties” around the “main drivers of climate change."
These companies’ incredibly high prices impoverish consumers every time they fill up at the pump or turn on the heat. Their high prices fuel the inflationary spiral and economic chaos worldwide. And their continued production poses a grave danger to the environment and the planet.
No, these companies’ only priority is profits, no matter the cost. No government or law will stop this. But the working class can, by expropriating these companies and putting them under workers’ control. That way, the enormous productive capacity and resources that have been built up by the working class will finally be able to benefit all of humanity.
Oct 30, 2023
Leah Heyn (also known by the nickname Lois) was born in Baltimore to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. She was a teenager already willing to question how society discriminated during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and was one of the first white activists to protest racism against black families. She protested the segregation of Baltimore’s parks, swimming pools, and tennis courts.
She was an early protester of the U.S. position in the Vietnam conflict as well. When the SPARK organization was formed in the early 1970s, she was already talking to its founders to understand why Marxists say only the organized working class can ultimately change a society designed to spread discrimination, sexism, militarism, and exploitation all over the world.
While raising three children, she became somewhat known around Baltimore for her energy and enthusiasm, her lifelong sincerity that warmed all who ran into her at protest after protest.
Leah was at the gates of Bethlehem Steel to distribute one of the first SPARK bulletins and would later be a cheerful face at the Maryland state offices on Preston Street, talking her political views over with many state workers for about 35 years. Her personal and political generosity was known to many.
Leah was good friends with people in other socialist and communist organizations, ready to speak her mind and listen respectfully to those she disagreed with, in the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, for example.
She particularly loved classical music, having taken some training at Peabody Institute, and she gave music lessons, especially beginning piano lessons, for decades.
She did not allow the frailties of her later years to slow her down. She attended meetings and protests to her final days. She swam into her 80s and was about to go out for one of her daily walks when she collapsed and died.
In other words, there was no retirement for Leah from her endless concern with how the world needed to change. She kept on to the end, a dear friend and comrade to all who knew her.
Oct 30, 2023
According to an investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times, the names of at least 27 current and former Chicago police officials were on leaked membership lists of the Oath Keepers.
This far-right group encourages members to “pass the word” among police and people in the military about a vast conspiracy they say they are fighting, claiming to be an organization for “people who serve.” But underneath their conspiracy theories is the same old racist garbage.
While the Oath Keepers claim to be standing up against “elites trampling Americans’ rights,” Chicago cops listed on the Oath Keeper rolls have been linked to all kinds of racist behavior. One of them trained recruits on a gun range where he reportedly made comments against Black people, Jews, Asians, and Puerto Ricans. A Black cop reported: "sometimes you would think you’re in the middle of a Klan rally." Among other racist comments and behavior, a black man who watched an Oath Keeper cop hit a fleeing black teenager with a police car said the cop called him a “f****** monkey” and a “f****** n*****."
In response to a public radio story about Oath Keepers in the Chicago Police Department in 2021, police promised to investigate. The Anti-Defamation League then sent a letter to the police leadership identifying eight Chicago cops as members of the Oath Keepers, which they call a hate group. But two years later, not one of these cops has been disciplined or removed.
It’s obvious the police and military are not about to root out the influence of groups like these. The ruling class has an interest in allowing these groups to fester, including within the police and army. They help prepare these forces to take even more violent actions against ordinary people here and in other countries whenever the capitalist class and its political servants decide what is necessary.
Oct 30, 2023
Federal investigators from the Department of Education have been reviewing the marketing and recruitment practices of Baker College, a pioneer in online learning that had grown to be the largest private non-profit school in Michigan.
A 2022 investigative report by ProPublica and the Detroit Free Press detailed the college’s low graduation rates and the heavy debt that many students had assumed. The federal probe is to determine whether or not Baker lived up to its promises to prospective students as to cost, financial aid, and post-graduation salaries. The school advertised “Be More with a degree from Baker College.” If it is found to be deceptive and negligent, Baker College could lose its accreditation and its access to federal student aid.
This federal student aid is at the center of the problem. In 1977, Baker College converted to non-profit status, and it grew fast, propelled by federal Pell grants and federally subsidized student loans. Lower-income students often turned to these federal loans.
It was a success story—until it wasn’t. For years, Baker College made promises to students about their programs and students’ job prospects after graduation, all the while raking in huge sums of government money. But, some former students have described how they had left Baker without the skills necessary to succeed in well-paying jobs. And they were burdened by crushing debt.
Baker College is only one of many colleges and universities in the United States that have profited from federal loans, very often at students’ expense. It is part of a pattern when it comes to the way education is set up in this for-profit system.
Oct 30, 2023
About 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. are voting on a tentative agreement reached between Kaiser and the coalition of unions representing the workers.
Kaiser and union leaders announced the agreement on October 13, six days after a three-day walkout of nurses’ aides, lab workers, radiology techs, custodians, cafeteria workers, clerical workers, call center agents, and others. The leaders of the largest union in the coalition, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), advertised the walkout as the "largest health care strike in U.S. history" and as a big fight against Kaiser’s cutbacks. But this was not a fight—it was a strike limited from the beginning to only three days. And union leaders gave Kaiser a 10-day notice, giving Kaiser ample time to prepare for the walkout.
It was all “in the partnership” between these union leaders and Kaiser management. And the proof is the tentative agreement union leaders accepted.
On the question of pay, Kaiser’s offer of a 21% raise over four years is far below the rate of increase in the cost of living—especially in high-cost areas like Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. Another central demand of Kaiser workers is adequate staffing, but this agreement completely ignores Kaiser’s policies that lead to short-staffing—such as filling previously full-time positions with part-time, on-call, and temporary workers, whom Kaiser management decides at will how many hours to assign.
It’s nothing new. Kaiser has been short-staffing departments for many years and through many contracts—which is also a key reason behind the huge amounts of profit Kaiser announces year after year. In the first six months of 2023 alone, for example, Kaiser made about 3.3 billion dollars in profit. And Kaiser, whose net worth is estimated at about 60 billion dollars, only wants to squeeze even more profit out of its workforce.
While Kaiser workers are still voting on the tentative agreement, SEIU leaders have been doing more of the same. The SEIU has recently called two other walkouts in the Los Angeles area, this time for five days each, at four L.A. area hospitals owned by Prime Healthcare and at the Providence St. Joseph Medical Center.
Seventy-five thousand workers could certainly be a formidable force to reckon with and the start of a wider fight—especially since this mobilization would coincide with the other strikes going on in Southern California, not only in health care but also in other industries.
Oct 30, 2023
Despite rain on Thursday, October 19th, striking casino workers were joined by striking Blue Cross Blue Shield and auto workers for a multi-union rally. Starting out at two different casinos, two columns of workers marched through downtown Detroit and joined together at Hart Plaza to shouts of enthusiasm.
For the casino workers, the push of all three casino companies to increase healthcare costs would wipe out any raises the casinos are proposing. As one striking casino worker at Hart Plaza shouted, "It’s not fair. We’re NOT having it!"
Then, eight days later, over 700 striking casino workers flooded the Detroit City Council meeting. Workers from the five casino unions wore matching shirts that said “Detroit Solidarity.” Workers demanded city officials pressure casino bosses to get this thing settled. The City Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution in support of striking workers.
Before this strike, the City of Detroit had been collecting $450,000 a day in wagering taxes. According to city officials, casinos are the city’s third largest source of revenue.
Since 2020, Detroit’s three casinos have cut back the number of workers by 1,500 while the remaining 3,700 workers are being forced to carry a heavier load. Detroit casinos generated a record 2.27 BILLION DOLLARS in revenue in 2022. Since the strike, casinos have been largely empty.
Detroit is still a union town. Since the strike, the tight organization and enthusiasm of Detroit casino workers have kept their fight in front of fellow workers. So far, most Detroiters are staying away from the casinos. The young workers on strike for the first time, alongside more experienced fighters, have been a breath of fresh air.
Oct 30, 2023
This article comes from the October 13 issue, #147 of Workers Fight, the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in England.
The Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair took place in mid-September in London’s Docklands. Since 1999, arms buyers and dealers from all over the world have been meeting every two years to do business at this event—or, as DSEI puts it, to display their “best-in-class advancements and innovations” in weaponry.
This year, attendance records were broken (up by 23%), with 1,600 exhibitors and 35,000 “visitors,” including delegations from foreign governments, companies, dealers, reporters, etc. ... And no wonder: European defense expenditure is estimated to have risen by 13% in 2022, bringing total global spending to an all-time high of $2,240 billion (£1,839 bn)—up by $40 billion (£33bn) since 2022. A year after the war began in Ukraine, and due to the embargoes on Russia, Russian defense exports fell by 21%, with the result that more Western weapons manufacturers are getting a chance to trade with Russia’s former “clients.”
Both the Armed Forces and London’s Met Police protected the event—at some expense: in 2021, policing apparently costs 3.64 million dollars (£3m). Outside the fair, different protest groups held demonstrations against the event and tried to stop lorries carrying arms. At least 12 people were arrested. However, it’s worth mentioning that some of these protests pointed a finger at countries like Saudi Arabia, accusing them of “war crimes.” Undoubtedly, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia are responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Yemen and are also feeding the war in Sudan. But where did they buy their weapons?
Indeed, the imperialist countries—starting with the U.S. and Britain—are the main exporters of military hardware and software to the Middle East. If the Saudi state has blood on its hands, the U.S. and Britain are covered in blood. And not just the blood of victims of the wars they started directly, whether against the Afghan Taliban or Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but the wars fought by their proxies, like Ukraine. And they’ve just done it again. They are sending warships and weapons to the Israeli government—the USA’s main Middle East proxy—to help it exact its merciless revenge by bombing and shelling the imprisoned population of Gaza.
Just days after the DSEI event, Zelensky had a meeting with over 250 international weapons producers, asking them to team up with Ukrainian producers to develop the country’s capacity to build and repair weapons. So far, different companies have said they plan to do just that. This is what it’s all about. Britain-based BAE Systems is first in the queue.
Oct 30, 2023
This article is translated from the October 27 issue, #2882 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
With Gaza under bombardment, and Gazans lacking everything, with the Israeli army preparing to send its armor and infantry into the ruined city—with the backing of all the imperialist countries; with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of all the Arab capitals crying out their anger, Western commentators ponder whether the situation might flare up.
Demonstrators numbered in the tens of thousands in Rabat on October 15, in Algiers on the 19th, in Cairo on the 20th, and in Tunis on several consecutive days, including in front of the French embassy [these are the capitals of Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia]. How much more clear could it be that this inferno, which imperialism has stoked for decades and which is once again consuming Gaza and its population, can spread? The rulers of imperialism are obviously aware of this, as they are of the fact that these explosions of anger can result in the growing instability of the powers that be, particularly those that are friends and clients of the Western powers.
This is why, after years of silence, diplomats, governments, and the U.N. are once again talking about a negotiated solution or even a two-state solution. Of course, as was the case thirty years ago, this is nothing more than idle talk based on the idea that to calm the population, we must always maintain the vague hope of a political solution hanging in the air. At the same time, the major powers are giving Israel and its army free rein to intervene. The United States is even renewing its military and financial aid.
The armies that the United States and others move to the region, the bases they maintain, are there for a purpose. Without going back too far, the United States intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan for no reason other than a show of strength. France did the same in Libya. Each time, the result was untold destruction. It’s all still fresh in people’s memories, and the destruction of Gaza has just been added to an already long list of exactions. If there is a conflagration, it is above all due to the constant intervention of the imperialist powers.
Biden and his staff know perfectly well that their policies, whether direct or through Israel, can only provoke hatred and, ultimately, widespread revolt. They know they can only respond with terror, and that’s why they support the ongoing Israeli bombardments. So, what they want to avoid is not a conflagration—which is already here—but a generalization of the immediate conflict that they didn’t initiate.
The United States has already sent two aircraft carriers and an entire fleet to the region. The pretext is to dissuade the Lebanese Hezbollah party and Iran from intervening. So far, the latter have been content with rhetoric and clearly have no desire to get involved in a war. But the imperialist leaders want to designate them in advance as the enemy to be destroyed, just as the Israeli leaders claim that their bombardments are aimed at “destroying Hamas,” when, in fact, they are crushing the civilian population. Behind a few sweet words, they threaten the populations of the entire Middle East with their guns before perhaps using them.
Oct 30, 2023
This article is translated from the October 27 issue, #2882 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Militarism devours the whole of Israeli society. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), per capita military spending will reach $2,623 in 2022, three times more than in France.
Military service is three years for men and two years for women. In the event of conflict, reservists provide the bulk of the troops. After October 7, the State of Israel mobilized 360,000 reservists, a figure unseen since the Yom Kippur War fifty years ago.
Reputed to be one of the best-equipped armies in the world, Israel’s army has benefited from the financial and military support of American imperialism from the outset. Its military aid has represented billions of dollars since the creation of the State of Israel. Recently, it has continued to pour in at the rate of four billion dollars a year, and Biden has just announced the dispatch of additional munitions and weapons. Weapons such as the “Iron Dome,” designed to intercept rockets and short-range shells from Lebanon and Gaza, are being financed, as are offensive weapons. Like Ukraine, armed by American imperialism to confront Russia, the State of Israel has been transformed into one of its military appendages, with the aim of weighing heavily on the Middle East, with the Israeli population providing soldiers ready to die.
After the Hamas attack, the U.S. military sent the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford to the Middle East. The world’s largest warship, it is cruising off Lebanon at the head of a squadron comprising a cruiser, four destroyers, and several nuclear submarines. A second naval air group around the aircraft carrier Eisenhower was dispatched a few days later. According to General Kurilla, who coordinates U.S. operations in the Middle East, the mission of these forces is to "stand firmly by our Israeli and regional partners, to meet the risk posed by any party seeking to expand the conflict".
The main risk of war in the Middle East stems from the presence of imperialism and its armaments.
Oct 30, 2023
This article is translated from the October 27 issue, #2882 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Those who denounce the policy of the Israeli government and the Israeli army’s massacre in the Gaza Strip and who point out that, precisely, Israel’s policy of building settlements on Palestinian land led to the current situation are being labeled as antisemites by much of the news media.
The accusation is meant to hurt because anti-semitism—specifically hatred of Jews—is one of the worst pestilences produced by the Christian West, continued throughout the capitalist world. For well over a century, anti-semitism has claimed its place in the politics of the far right in France: openly with the accusations of treason against French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894 and with collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, and less openly since then. The empire of the Romanov tsars in Russia made anti-semitism their government policy. They organized pogroms to try to divert mass rebellion. Finally, anti-semitism pushed to the point of delirium served as a vehicle for the Nazi party in its conquest of power in Germany and then led to the massacre of more than six million Jews. The workers’ movement has always fought against anti-semitism, obviously. And reactionaries have never failed to conflate Jews and revolutionaries in their hatred and repression.
Today, those who uphold the established order turn the truth on its head. These successors of generations of sworn antisemites in France, the U.S., and other imperialist countries now claim that an unconditional defense of Israel and the defense of Jews in general against anti-semitism are one and the same. This is a shameless and, above all, self-serving lie.
In fact, neither the Zionist movement before 1948 nor the Israeli government afterward ever united or represented all Jews—that is to say, all potential targets of anti-semitism. Clearly, in Israel and in all countries, there are Jewish voices speaking out against Zionism, against settlements, against the bombing of Gaza, and in favor of a government bringing together all the peoples living in the land of Palestine. They refuse to be defined and represented by Netanyahu and his policies.
With the progress of civilization steadily eroding, catastrophe is never far off. We may certainly see a relapse into the persecution of Jewish people. But, saying that the existence of the Jewish state of Israel is the ultimate protection for persecuted or threatened Jews is a dangerous illusion. Israel’s policies and the fact that it has become the forward operating base of imperialism in the Middle East forces its inhabitants into a life of lies consisting of ignoring the hell on the other side of the wall. This policy forces them to be prison guards or soldiers constantly on the alert. It encourages the hatred of entire populations.
Nor does the existence of Israel protect Jews living in other countries—that is to say, the majority of Jews. They are not enticed by the prospect of emigrating to become soldiers in the Middle East.
Finally, the more Israel’s existence depends on the military support of American imperialism, the more insecure it actually is. The guarantee for the population of Israel to be able to continue living there can only be in the search for true coexistence with all the peoples of the region.
Condemning and combating the policies of Israel and that of imperialism in the name of a proletarian revolution, which would let people coexist while respecting their national identities, has nothing in common with anti-semitism. On the contrary, this means fighting for a world finally rid of the medieval scourge of anti-semitism, which rotting imperialism constantly revives, as it revives many other old afflictions.
Oct 30, 2023
This article is translated from the February issue #309 of La Voix des Travailleurs (Workers’ Voice), the journal of the Organization of Revolutionary Workers (Organisation des Travailleurs Revolutionaires) active in Haiti.
On October 2nd, the United Nations Security Council approved the deployment of a “multinational security support mission” in Haiti. It will be yet another armed group in Haiti. It will aim to restore the authority of Haiti’s ruling class and the political elites, much impaired by the criminal gangs. But for working people, security always depends only on their ability to organize their own force to protect themselves from criminal abuses in their neighborhoods.
It is an illusion to believe that the Haitian ruling class can survive without the services of armed gangs. The permanent presence of gangs alongside other armed bodies like the army and police historically testify to the desire of the wealthy classes to maintain power by violence against working people and to hold them in abject poverty and total destitution. Bosses in subcontracting, big merchants, and the political elites vastly prefer putting up with armed gangs than helping to raise the standard of living of ordinary people in Haiti.
The current problem for this parasitical minority and their imperialist allies is not so much the existence of these gangs as the hegemony of power they have won on the ground. Massacres and abominable crimes by the gangs are problems—but more problematic for the rich are the hurdles the gangs put in the way of the wealthy class’s pursuit of riches.
Only time will tell whether the U.N. mission succeeds in loosening the grip of the armed gangs enough for economic activities to revive, for people to move from one province to another, and for the political class’s circus to resume, etc.
But ordinary people have nothing to expect from this mission. The U.N. force’s job is not to address unemployment, low wages, bad or no housing, or exploitative jobs, nor to distribute land to poor farmers or build hospitals and schools. And in terms of the gangs mentioned in the resolution presented to the U.N. Security Council, the mission’s soldiers will not tear up the foundations of the society that created these gangs.
With or without the presence of foreign troops, the safety and security of ordinary people in the neighborhoods, cities, and on the highways, and the improvement of their living conditions all depend on what their own struggles can win. After all, no one is going to hand this to working people as a gift.
Oct 30, 2023
This article is translated and excerpted from the October 27, no. 2882 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The West Bank has been part of the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. Before that, it was attached to Jordan in 1948. The Israelis, victors in 1967, were determined to go beyond occupying the territory, and so pushed for additional settlements. Today, the West Bank has more than 3 million Palestinians and 500,000 Jewish settlers. The West Bank was administered by Israel after 1967 and then came under partial control of the Palestinian Authority with the Oslo Accords of 1993–1995.
With the Oslo Accords, the West Bank was divided into three zones. Zone A, less than 20% and mainly urban, is fully entrusted to the Palestinian Authority. Zone B includes old and new refugee camps and is co-managed by the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Finally, almost two-thirds of Zone C is under the jurisdiction of Israel, particularly the settlements.
Yitzhak Rabin, Labor Prime Minister of Israel and a major player in Oslo, engineered this agreement, creating collaboration between the Israeli army and the Palestinian police in the occupied territories. According to him, the transfer of certain tasks to the Palestinian Authority would "relieve—and this is the most important—the Israeli army from having to carry them out itself."
In fact, after 1967, the building of new settlements never stopped. Both legal settlements—from the point of view of the Israeli government—and unregulated outposts are protected by the Israeli army. Financed by public funds, the settlements benefit from significant tax advantages and infrastructure installed by the government.
This progressive absorption of Palestinian territory, to the detriment of those who live and work there, has accelerated under pressure by the right-wing partisans of Greater Israel. Enforcement of settlements has become standard policy for right-wing governments led by the Likud party, especially under the influence of their far-right allies.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to the post of prime minister in 2009 opened the door for the legalization of unregulated settlements. Militant settlers built them with the aim of preventing the territorial continuity that would make a Palestinian state viable. Instead, a veritable policy of apartheid has been put in place, drastically limiting the rights of Arab inhabitants and making it difficult and even dangerous for them to travel daily near the settlements. Haaretz newspaper quoted Netanyahu’s declaration in 2020: "It is we who dictate the security rules throughout the territory. […] They will remain Palestinian subjects."
This policy has only become more accentuated since then. At the end of 2022, the same Netanyahu integrated representatives of the most racist far-right wing into his government to prolong his political career. This has only increased attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank. Since October 7, these attacks by settler commandos have multiplied even more.
Oct 30, 2023
The war in Ukraine, especially after the catastrophic escalation of war in the Middle East, has all but disappeared from the news in the U.S. But this war, which began 18 months ago, still continues to kill people—and to fill the coffers of weapons manufacturers and merchants based in the U.S. and other big powers.
In September, for example, the Ukrainian military command announced that Ukrainian forces had captured an area of about one square mile from the Russians. The Russians, on their part, also boast such military “successes.”
These claims are usually not independently verified, but even if these claims are true, they come at a very bloody price. Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities treat the number of casualties as military secrets. Still, in August, the New York Times reported that, according to estimates of U.S. officials, the number of casualties in the war had reached 500,000—190,000 of them dead and 310,000 injured. And that’s only military casualties, without counting the thousands of casualties this war has claimed among civilians.
Not to mention the millions of people who were driven from their homes by this war, the number of Ukrainian refugees registered in other countries has reached 6.2 million, about one out of seven people living in Ukraine before the war.
So, this “war of attrition,” as commentators now call it, continues to kill and victimize human beings and to destroy what is necessary to live for those who remain—and not only in Ukraine. Practically every day, Ukrainian drones strike Russian border provinces, and sometimes further from the front. And inflation, exacerbated by the war, is soaring in Russia, which the working population, active and retired, pays for. As is the case in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of men have fled Russia to avoid being drafted into the army.
The war doesn’t stop because big powers, above all the U.S., continue to supply weapons to Ukraine, and increasingly deadly and destructive ones. After all the guns, missiles, tanks, cluster bombs, and warplanes, Denmark and the Netherlands announced in August that, with the approval of the U.S., they were going to supply F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
So the killing continues, and so does the U.S. funding of it: Officially 45 billion dollars so far and counting. Last summer, then U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive would be long and very bloody. "That is the nature of war," Milley added. And this war threatens to spread—especially since the U.S. continues to arm other countries in the region, such as Ukraine’s western neighbor, Poland.
U.S. officials have openly said that they purposely continue to fund Ukraine’s war effort to weaken Russia and further the U.S.’s control in that part of the world. U.S. imperialism drives the war in Ukraine—with its horrible cost for the people of Ukraine and Russia.
Oct 30, 2023
The current war in Ukraine was set off by Russia’s invasion in February 2022. But long before Russia sent troops into Ukraine, the U.S. was sending money and weapons to countries lining the borders of Russia, countries that had once made up its periphery or once had even been part of its nation. For thirty years, the U.S. sent hundreds of billions of dollars worth of military goods into the region bordering Russia, helping NATO set up military bases threatening Russia’s borders.
The Ukrainian government was only one more pawn in U.S. policy in the region.
The war in Ukraine is not the result of a rivalry between the two nations. The Russian people and the Ukrainian people were not forever at each other’s throats. They had long lived without borders, mixed in the same territories—Russians in Ukraine, Ukrainians living in Russia, and many families sharing both Ukrainian and Russian heritage.
But today, they are locked in a combat that has cost half a million of their lives.
This is a consequence of policy choices—the long-term U.S. policy to weaken Russia. Russia is still the biggest country in the world, occupying over one-tenth of Earth’s land mass holding some of the planet’s most critical raw materials. It has long been a target for capital investment, and what capital wants, government policy seeks to provide.
The latest war in the Middle East was started by the incursion of Hamas commando units into Israel. But before Hamas carried out its bloody attack on Israelis, Israel’s government had been carrying out repressive operations against the Palestinian population. Locking the Palestinians within Gaza’s narrow prison, absorbing Palestinian land in the West Bank, Israel’s government was sooner or later bound to provoke a reaction.
The conflict has pitted two peoples, Palestinian and Israeli, against each other. It is not because two peoples, Arabs and Jews, can’t get along with each other. It is the result of policy choices pursued by all the big imperialisms to put their hands on the Middle East’s vast oil reserves.
Israel was supposed to be a refuge for Jews subjected to the horrors of European pogroms and death camps. Instead, the establishment of Israel pitted Jews against Arabs by removing Arabs from their homes. And it made Jewish settlers dependent on imperialism for their existence.
For decades, tiny Israel was the biggest recipient of U.S. military spending in the world. Its economy lived on U.S. grants. That money served to oppress the Arab peoples of the Middle East, but it did not make the Jewish people secure.
The U.S. is by far the predominant military power in the world, spending more each year than the next nine military powers spend altogether. That money is spent so U.S. corporations can drain wealth from all over the world.
In paying for war, the U.S. government is not defending Ukrainians, Israelis, Afghans, or anyone else it claims to defend. And it certainly is not defending the working people of this country.
It is defending the right of a very tiny class of people to control the world’s wealth—the American capitalist class.
It is the same capitalist class that has carried out a war for over 50 years against working people here, reducing our standard of living—so much so that even our life expectancy is going down today. Do not believe that we are protected because we live inside a country that carries out its wars in other parts of the world. Eventually, the U.S. policy of war will catch up with us. It has already helped to destroy our livelihood, our children’s schools, and life as our parents once knew it.
War is the mechanism that capitalism has used to keep its rotting system from foundering. It will keep using war until the day it dies—until working people in this country and elsewhere find a way to get rid of the system that needs war.
Oct 30, 2023
On October 26, the UAW leadership announced a tentative contract agreement with Ford and told striking workers to go back to work, even before workers could vote on the contract. Union leaders had called a partial strike at the “Big Three” auto companies, and Ford was the first to settle. An agreement with Stellantis soon followed, and one with GM is expected soon after.
When the UAW leaders announced that they had reached a first tentative agreement with Ford, they called this a “record contract.”
If a “record contract” means that auto workers gained back all the concessions they have lost, this contract is certainly not that. Auto workers did not even gain back what they have lost to inflation since 2007. They would need an immediate raise of about 30% to do that. But they got only an 11% raise upfront. Even with the 11% raise, auto workers’ wages would still be less than they were in 2019 when adjusted for inflation. And the additional 14% total, plus a cost-of-living allowance (COLA), over the rest of the five-year (not four-year) contract, may be enough to stay even, but it will never catch up with what they have lost.
The UAW leaders also said that their goal was to get rid of tiers. That didn’t happen either. While lower-tier workers will get raises and get to full pay faster, this contract does not get rid of tiers, especially when it comes to retirement benefits.
The new UAW leadership ran this strike the same way the old UAW leadership ran the strike against GM in 2019—from the top down. The union leadership never proposed anything that would have led to the workers beginning to organize their own strike. They just told the workers where and when to man the isolated picket lines for a few hours a week.
There were no meetings organized where workers could come together to discuss and make their own decisions: What are the most important things that we want to fight for? What is the bottom line that we can accept in a contract? Should we stop the trucks from driving through the picket lines? Should we strike every plant at all three companies?
Many auto workers felt that this should have been a full strike at the Big Three. If auto workers had struck all three auto companies, it could have unleashed a level of power that would have been a force to be reckoned with. We don’t know how far the strike could have gone. We do know that, in the past, strikes by auto workers have been a catalyst for other workers to follow and resulted in strikes that spread throughout the whole working class. We do know that workers in many other industries today were excited by the possibility of an auto strike, hoping it would spread elsewhere. Why does this matter? Because the bosses, led by Wall Street financiers, are fighting together as a class. It takes a wider fight and a bigger disruption to shake them, especially now with their system in crisis. If workers were not held back, they could, at the very least, have gained experience for fights to come.
While this contract addresses some pay equity issues, the killing speedups, the unlivable schedules of work that result in workers living shorter, harder lives with no letup—the real lack of job security—all these concessions, which are the real problems for auto workers, remain in place.
When their system is left unchallenged, the bosses do whatever they want to control production for profit—and use our bodies as commodities to be exploited to the last drop. This strike, as limited as it was, testifies to the desire of workers to challenge this system.
Oct 30, 2023
United Auto Workers (UAW) represented Blue Cross workers in four local unions in Michigan have been on strike for nearly two months now and still do not have a contract. Many workers are expressing anger about how the strike has been handled.
Striking workers have been largely kept in the dark by the UAW International union about what the specific sticking points are in the negotiations between the union and the company. So, people feel they can’t measure what they are striking for. Knowing this, the company jumped on it and beat the union to the punch in revealing contract content (their version) directly to Blue Cross workers in a letter they sent to union members.
Of course, the letter was full of malarkey about how much the company values workers while at the same time basically admitting that what they’re really concerned about is the bottom line, keeping down costs. Workers were generally unimpressed with what the company was offering. For example, Blue Cross says it is offering a 7% pay increase when an employee moves to a higher grade compared with the 5% in the previous contract. Unfortunately, hardly any workers see the possibility of any such promotion when, in reality, union jobs have been slashed dramatically in recent decades.
On the other hand, some striking workers are equally ticked at how their local union leaders are handling the strike. So much so, that after the company sent out its letter, the International union finally felt the need to give its members some information about what the disagreements were with the company. The International Union says it’s mainly fighting the company over outsourcing but says nothing about a strategy to make the company budge on the question.
And, the leaderships of some of the local unions are still doing nothing to involve their members in the running of their own strike. Workers should know what’s going on with contract negotiations and have a say in the running of their strike. The company’s offer needs to be brought out for workers to vote on. It’s the only way to call the company’s bluff.
Workers have the right to meet, discuss, and decide the direction of their strike, and that’s not what is happening in this strike at Blue Cross. To go forward, workers need to meet to discuss and decide it’s worth the fight.